Empfehlungen basierend auf "Catherine the Great"

The Josephine B. Trilogy comprises three acclaimed,bestselling novels that draw the reader into the delicate yet passionaterelationship between Josephine and Napoleon Bonaparte: The Many Lives& Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.; Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe;and The Last Great Dance on Earth. Together in this omnibusedition, they form an irresistible epic, tracing Josephine’s transformationfrom impressionable young girl to canny and compassionate wife, to confidanteempress and one of the most sophisticated and powerful women in history.Adored by readers of historical fiction, the Josephine novelsare a sweeping tale of love and loss, political intrigue and revolution duringone of the most tumultuous periods in European history.

A Harper Perennial Modern Classics reissue of this unflinching examination of post-war French intellectual life, and an amazing chronicle of love, philosophy and politics from one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.An epic romance, a philosophical argument and an honest and searing portrayal of what it means to be a woman, this is Simone de Beauvoir's most famous and profound novel. De Beauvoir sketches the volatile intellectual and political climate of post-war France with amazing deftness and insight, peopling her story with fictionalisations of the most important figures of the era, such as Camus, Sartre and Nelson Algren. Her novel examines the painful split between public and private life that characterised the female experience in the mid-20th century, and addresses the most difficult questions of gender and choice.It is an astonishing work of intellectual athleticism, yet also a moving romance, a love story of passion and depth. Long out of print, this masterpiece is now reissued as part of the Harper Perennial Modern Classics series so that a whole new generation can discover de Beauvoir's magic.

By chance, John and Jean -- one English, the other French -- meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared. So the Englishman steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing. Gripping and complex, The Scapegoat is a masterful exploration of doubling and identity, and of the dark side of the self. "A dazzlingly clever and immensely entertaining novel."-New York Times

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Named one of the Best Books of the Year by: O Magazine, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Seattle Times The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own.  Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.

Jackie Kennedy was a twentieth-century icon of glamour, elegance and grace. As the beautiful young wife of President John F. Kennedy, she was adored, her style imitated around the world.But beneath the perfection of her public life lay contradiction, passion and, all too often, tragedy. Sarah Bradford's brilliant new biography not only gives a fascinating account of her time with JFK, but also of her life after his assassination in 1963, in all its colour and controversy.

A beautifully thorough examination into the complicated relationship between Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici, two of the most powerful women in Renaissance Europe who shaped each other as well as the course of history. Sixteenth-century Europe was a hostile world dominated by court politics and patriarchal structures–and yet against all odds, two women rose to power: Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. Much has been written about these shrewd and strategic sovereigns, but though their l legacies have been heavily scrutinized, nothing has been said of their complicated relationship—thirty years of camaraderie, competition, and conflict that forever changed the face of Europe. In Blood, Fire, and Gold, historian Estelle Paranque offers a new way of looking at two of history's most powerful women: through the eyes of the other. Whether engaged in bloody battles or peaceful accords, Elizabeth and Catherine admired the force and resilience of the other, while never forgetting that they were, first and foremost, each other's true rival. This is a story of  love and rivalry, of war and wisdom, and—above all else—of the courage and sacrifice it takes to secure and sustain power as a woman in a male-dominated world. **SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, "10 BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF 2022"**  **HISTORY TODAY, "BOOKS OF THE YEAR (2022)"**

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.   The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.    But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the institution.   Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint—until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist’s work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint’s life—not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.

“A definitive, deeply moving inquiry into the life of the young, imperiled artist, and a masterful exegesis of Diary of a Young Girl…Extraordinary testimony to the power of literature and compassion” –Booklist (starred review)In Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, Francine Prose, author of Reading Like a Writer, deftly parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Frank’s beloved classic, The Diary of a Young Girl. Approved by both the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family, this work of literary criticism unravels the complex, fascinating story of the diary and effectively makes the case for it being a work of art from a precociously gifted writer.

‘Extraordinary... Brought history alive on the page... Tense and emotional... Sensitive yet brutal...With the most unexpected end that left me breathless. Wow, just wow... Incredible’ NetGalley Review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1941, Nazi-occupied Paris: In the glamorous Ritz hotel there is a woman with a dangerous secret...

Mantel recounts the events between the fall of the ancien regime and the peak of the Terror as seen through the eyes of the three protagonists--Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins--and a huge cast of supporting characters (including brief appearances by the scrofulous Marat). The three revolutionaries, longtime acquaintances, spend their days scheming and fighting for a corruption-free French Republic, but their definitions of "corrupt" are as different as the men themselves. Robespierre is the fulcrum. Rigidly puritanical, he is able to strike terror into the most stalwart of hearts, and his implacable progress towards his goal makes him the most formidable figure of the age.--From Publisher's Weekly.